Tschüss with Cheese!

For my mom, who is already confused: Tschüss (pronounced like shoes with a ch-sound before it) is German for see ya! And as for the cheese, that is just how I celebrated both the completion of my Sprachkurs (language course) and therefore my leaving of Altheim.

Cheese-y goodness.

Elke made a special meal, usually reserved for Christmas time, for my little going away party. She really didn't make anything, but rather she prepared a bunch of different ingredients that we made using raclette.
                        
Don't quote me on this, but I think raclette is French for "melting cheese all over different things in a mini-shovel, eating waaay too much, and stopping just before you explode." But, like I said, not quite sure.

Irregardless of how delicious it was, I think I need more practice to work up my tolerance. I could only eat three of the shovel things full. Volker continued to eat for a half hour after I put my fork down.            

Volker: Master Racletter 

Not so masterful. They always fell apart.

So now I say goodbye to you Altheim, and I move forward to buying my own groceries again *sob* and attending real university in Germany. Wish me luck!

Tschüss to you too, you crazy bird.

Just a Day in the Life

So Niklas was right, (Go ahead and read it again, Nick.) I will probably never fully integrate into my host family like someone staying for an entire year. Two months is just not long enough. After almost six weeks I still get scared when I come home from school because frankly, it's difficult. Not because Elke or Volker are terrible to be around. Quite the opposite, they are very accepting and forgiving of my shoddy German and schedule. The fact of the matter is that I dropped into someone's life with no orientation of their lifestyle nor their language.

Beyond that fact, I have settled into a pretty nice routine here and I can say without hesitation that it is nothing short of great. Every morning I wake up and head up to breakfast that Elke has set out on the table for me because Volker heads to work around five. She greats me with a Morgen ('Morning) and we sit down to our respective coffee and Nutella. After that I head to the bus stop with two other students to school. School goes until around four, after which I head back home. I return my cleaned dishes from lunch and talk with Elke for a minute or two. She always asks how school went and I always stumble through a story of my day. Then it's down to my room for hausaufgaben (homework) until six when Volker comes down to invite me up to dinner. Yeah, he invites. I always have the option to say no. Like I would. Elke cooks something especially for myself and Julian, her son, every night even though her and Volker eat a cold meal. She then lets me take the left-overs for lunch in school. What a stand-up lady.

At night it's always the same, too. Das Perfekte Dinner, a sweet German reality show about cooking, and sometimes Volker pulls out some chocolates from somewhere. We kind of watch television and chat until I get tired and go to bed.
So no, I probabaly won't ever be a real part of the family. But I'm certainly not doing too shabby either.

Lazy day

I am going to be really lazy today and not post, since nothing interesting has happened. Instead, here is a video of my house and host family. This was my first attempt at using the Flip, which is a very tiny video camera that has a built-in movie maker. I know the quality is crappy, the shots are shaky, and the sound is terrible (especially my on-camera German, what's up with that??) but it's the best I've got and it literally took me a half hour to make..  Don't judge. Please.

Familie Kohl

I'm going to let the story of how I got to Altheim and my new family stay with the Abele family because no one needs to know how inept I am at life.  So, onward.
Here I am. At my host family. They are Elke, Volker, Julian and Pascal. Elke is eine Hausfrau/stay-at-home-mom and Volker works with Mercedes-Benz as something super technical that I don't really understand, Julian is a student, and Pascal is also a student but does not live at home anymore. Julian is about my age and loves to be on his computer. I think he's a little shy; once I got him to speak to me about music but not much more. We'll see what the rest of my stay brings.

Looking back on it, I really can't believe that I was so scared before. This family is great. They've had billions of Gaststudenten before me and they've pretty much got it figured out. Other than Elke having surgery and being a bit out of commission because of her knee, things are about perfect. Thumbs up to the Herman-Hesse Kolleg for the good pick. Oh, I almost forgot. So, they have a parakeet. Wellensittich auf deutsch. His name is Carrie (I have no idea how to spell it, but that's how it sounds.) and is probably the biggest form of entertainment in the house. He gets to fly freely about the house and chatters constantly. I kind of like him.

Right now my brain is semi-befuddled since I have spoken nothing but German so far, and now I am writing in English. Can you get a headache from thinking? 
Yes, you can. And I have. Who would have thought that just speaking could be so hard. I mean, you do it every day right? Just talk. Well, trust me. It's a real big nut to crack, but I'm working on it and I've been told I'm doing better than average. Mini-pat on the back.

I had my first day of school here. Interesting stuff. It's set in this older house-ish building with many stories and on top there is a cafe area, table tennis, television and so forth. The students are allowed to kind of just hang out there before/during/after classes since we get breaks and sometimes people don't leave. Today we just took a placement test-which I bombed-and an oral test-which I rocked- so between the two I did pretty average. From there we will be place into groups for our classes. However, for the entire four hour duration today it was purely testing. Then to a bakery for some pretzels for lunch. If you have not been to Germany, let the pretzels alone be a reason for wanting to travel here. It's like biting into a little chunk of heaven with a bit of salt on top. Love 'em.

I would say that so far everything is going good. Tomorrow I have a full day of class and we'll see then how I deal with it.